video games are good, except when they're not

Day #328: The Other One With Five Free Games In It

Less a game than a experiment in how to move on, Effigy allows you to place actual image files from your computer into a virtual fire that will then delete them. There’s a very particular use-case here for anyone that has trouble letting go of particularly bothersome memories. I can relate perhaps a bit too well.

Presented under the context of an unfinished game gone horribly wrong, Quirkaglitch is so confusing and abrasive that many won’t even get past the title screen. If you do, you are then expected to navigate an intentionally awkward control screen through environments that look like a ZX Spectrum threw up inside of a Vectrex. It’s pretty cool.

While a game like Eversion thrives on its ability to deceive and slowly unveil something terrible over a period of time, Freedom-Diegesis starts out of the gate letting you know how hostile it is towards you, mixing a basic puzzle platformer with an aesthetic that makes you downright terrified to touch anything.

Yes, you too can finally know the crippling defeat a content creator feels when no one watches their videos! A simulation that maybe hits a little too close to home, Tube Tycoon tries to offer a fairly realistic journey to the top (or somewhere near the middle) of the YouTube world.

A very subdued experiment about perspective. You are placed in a room with a handful of people that you have the power to walk through. Upon doing so, you can see how they perceive the exact same room, if only for a few moments. It doesn’t last more than a few minutes, but still manages to say something very powerful in its own understated way.